1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a toll collection system in a vehicle toll roadway and particularly, to a system for determining a kind of vehicle which travels on a roadway by being applied to the toll collection system and a method therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, efforts to adopt an intellectual traffic system are tried in the world. For instance, recently, an electronic toll collection system (hereinafter, as ETCS) which is a system for automatically collecting toll, capable of relieving a problem of vehicle congestion at tollgates which is generated in current manual toll collection systems (hereinafter, as TCS), reducing operating maintenance cost and improving services, by reducing logistics costs, improving environmental condition and computerizing toll collection.
The electronic toll collection system is designed to wirelessly collect toll by using dedicated small region communication (hereinafter, as DSRC) under the condition that a vehicle travels without stopping when passing through a toll gate. However, there has been no way to accurately check toll vehicles and toll-free vehicles with the wireless communication. For instance, in case a large bus in which an on board unit (hereinafter, as OBU; a terminal which is installed inside a vehicle for wirelessly communicating and billing) of a small passenger vehicle is installed passes an automatic toll collection system, whether the small passenger vehicle passed the system or the larger bus passed the system could not be accurately determined.
Therefore, to improve the above problem, a vehicle kind determination device, capable of determining the DSRC for the wireless communication and a kind of vehicle is required.
The vehicle kind determination device measures a height and a width of a vehicle traveling a roadway, determines a kind of the vehicle by using the measurement result, and detects violation vehicles and regular vehicles by checking vehicle kind information and wireless communication information. Here, the violation vehicle can be a large bus in which the OBU of a small passenger vehicle is installed.
On the other hand, as a vehicle measuring device, there is a contact-type vehicle measuring device which is contacted with a detection object. The contact-type vehicle measuring device uses a method of measuring a vehicle traveling a roadway by using pressure of wheels of the vehicle.
Hereinafter, the conventional contact-type vehicle counting device will be described with reference to FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing a vehicle measuring device which uses a tread-board sensor.
As shown in FIG. 1, the contact-type vehicle measuring device is composed of a resistance contact-type tread-board sensor 10 is buried in a roadway where vehicles travel and determines kinds of vehicles by measuring the number of wheel shafts of the vehicle, wheel distance (distance between a center of grounding surface of a left tire and a center of grounding surface of a right tire) and wheel width (width of tire) by measuring change of resistance by wheel pressure of the vehicle passing the resistance contact-type tread-board sensor 10.
However, the conventional contact-type vehicle measuring device using the resistance contact-type tread-board sensor 10 can not measure change of the resistance caused by wheel pressure of the vehicle travelling the roadway at a high speed. In addition, installation space must be secured on the roadway to install guiding facilities such as a traffic island to guide a vehicle to pass a ground so under which the tread-board sensor 10 is buried.
As described above, the conventional art damaged the roadway by burying the tread-board sensor and it was difficult to repair the tread-board sensor buried in the roadway when the tread-board sensor is out of order.
Also, since the tread-board sensor in accordance with the conventional art is a contact type, the number of the usage is limited, and the kind of the vehicle traveling the roadway at a high speed can not be precisely determined.